


Moments

by tradrishanally



Series: The United States of Chaos* (*Read: America) [6]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers, Statetalia
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 11:35:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17243516
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tradrishanally/pseuds/tradrishanally
Summary: The healing process is hard, but little moments like this help move it along.





	Moments

**Author's Note:**

> I moved this out of State Scenes because I'd rather it be it's own thing.

She sits under the tree in a stillness uncharacteristic of her, not even her hand twitched. She stared down at the book, the precise drawings of happy faces not even bringing a twinkle to her eye. Eli sits next to her, and for a minute there is a distilled and heavy silence. They both want to say something, but there are no words to say that won’t make it completely awkward.

Eli fiddles with the scabs on his hands, he’d been helping Venus with a project she had to complete for her boss and boiling hot, liquid glass will burn you if you have no idea what you’re doing. Alyssa’s eyes dart to the scabs and she gently pushes his hand away from the ugly, healing skin. “What do you want?” bubbles out of her mouth in a voice nobody would recognise as hers. It’s broken, melancholy, and hollow, and awful symphony.

“None of us blame you for his bullshit. He did it to you to get to Elliot, and he thought that Elliot could easily be taken down. It was stupid, but we’d never killed the fucker if he didn’t-  _ you know _ ,” Eli tried to word it around the insufferable word. He coiled in on himself when “you know” sounded through the air, he didn’t like the word at all, really no one did. They all vowed to never speak it after 1798. 

“This sounds like the exact same speech Madison gave you after she killed  _ him _ ,” Alyssa says as Eli’s eyes widen. She hadn’t existed back then, not until 1819. She quickly adds on, “Noah wrote it down and the paper was stuffed into a book I got.”

Eli goes quiet again, and Alyssa sits in the silence, setting the book half in his lap, and letting him read through it with her.   
\---

Alyssa was becoming like Venus, never sleeping, always stressed, always hiding her pain. It was a constant stream of her hiding it, and letting it out when nobody was there. It made her still and nobody couldn’t worry about her. They’d seen the signs of severe trauma with Eli, and revisited it with Venus (her symptoms were much worse than his, his was a one time thing, hers was constant enough to destroy her memory of her old self). Alyssa was somewhere in-between.

Eli catches her up in the middle of the night, around 4 am. She’s sitting on the couch shaking violently, and nobody is even up to comfort her. Elliot had (to the best of his ability) offered for them to share a room until she gets better, and he was nowhere to be seen and probably still asleep. Her hand twitches violently enough to have whatever hot liquid was in that cup to spill over onto her thigh. 

It’s oddly reminiscent of when the nightmares got to him, but Stephanie and Lauren usually dragged him into their bedroom and got him back to sleep were someone could be up with him if necessary.

But, nobody is up with her and she has to suffer without consolation.

He sits next to her and waits for her to acknowledge him, nothing is scarier than being up incredibly early and being startled. She shifts into a position where she could easily look at him and he can see the streaks where she’d been crying, her cheeks still shiny from the tears. 

“You don’t have to tell me about them. They could…” he trails off. 

“It was just what happened after, and I could feel the pain like I hadn’t healed yet. Isaac hadn’t found me yet and…” she doesn’t finish, tears welled up from the recount. Eli presses his fingers gently to her eyes, wiping the tears before they fall. 

This silence is comforting, and Alyssa lays her head on his shoulder when she sets the mug onto the coffee table and hands him the end of the quilt. Elliot’s head pops out from the wall separating the living room from the hallway and he sighs in relief seeing Alyssa in some form of okay.   
\---

Her nightmares have seemed to stop, but he still forces himself to wake up and look, just in case.. 

One night she wakes up and check, and she scares him by following him silently. “What’re you doing up?” and in that moment she knows that Eli should not be scared at 2 am. He almost screams and jumps high enough to hit the ceiling and Alyssa can’t help but smile.

Eli whisper-yells at her for 5 minutes while she laughs behind her hand.   
\---

The fact that Elliot is mute now doesn’t change the fact that he has threatened to murder Eli if he ever hurt Alyssa. It’s much more terrifying when the mute person threatens to kill you if you hurt their best friend.

\---

It’s a single moment when Eli and Elliot realize Alyssa is getting better. She’s helping Connecticut bake butterscotch-orange creme pie for Venus’s birthday when she hums along to the song that Maine is playing on his harp. The room almost goes still when everyone notices Alysa humming.

“She’s singing again,” Virginia almost cries.   
\---

It’s sunset and Eli finds her running around the backyard, chasing fireflies. He smiles at her completely childish antics, and Venus smirks at him before snubbing out her cigarette and smirking. “Go get ’er tiger,” is the last thing said before the door closes and Alyssa’s head turns to investigate. Eli smiles and waves as Alyssa returns to her rapid catching of fireflies.   
\---

He isn’t paying attention at all. The only thing he’s focused on is how excited Alyssa sounds because she’s talking about the gemstones. She holds up three of them, one of which he can recognise- a diamond- and he tunes in just in time to hear “Which one would look best on something like a ring or necklace?”

He’s careful to respond, before looking very closely at the green of her eyes and the green sapphire. “This one.” He spaces out as she continues on with her animated talking.

He doesn’t hear him say, “You’re so beautiful when you go on and on about the gems.”


End file.
